A Dream for an Insomniac

“Este hombre es tu Papa?” (This man is your father?)
“Si.” (Yes.)
She looks skeptically at me and then back to my dad. Her royal blue uniform sits stiffly on her shoulders and I can’t help but think of
the cardboard suits of armor my mother used to make for me only half a lifetime ago, all painted in silver and glitter, and running
around my house, my castle, protecting my mother, my Queen. The woman types something into the computer behind the counter.
“Y tu eres de los…?” (And you’re from…?)
“Los Estados Unidos.” (The United States.)
“Y tu Papa es de…?” (And your father’s from…?)
“Inglaterra.” (England.)
“Y tu Mama?” (And your mother?)
“Los Estados Unidos.”
“Y tu…hablas espanol?” (And you…speak Spanish?)
“Si.”
She checks our passports and stares at us quizzically. I watch as she punches numbers into the phone, never taking her eyes off of
us as she talks. She speaks hurriedly. Probably because she knows that I won’t be able to keep up. I am only twelve. I am stuck at
customs in Veracruz, Mexico. My dad speaks no Spanish. He is stuck too. He is growing impatient, hating every minute standing on
the other side of the counter as someone else types at high speeds on a screen he can’t see. I am sure that half the time the people
at the counters are only hitting arrows and punching ‘Enter’ repeatedly. She puts the phone down and composes herself.
“Senores, dejame entender todo. El es tu Papa? Y tu eres su hijo? Pero ustedes tienen apellidos diferentes? Y no hay ninguna
manera de hablar con tu Mama, el marido de tu Papa?” These words are fired out at high speeds. Rhythmically. Staccato. Rat-a-tat-
tat.
I look down at the blue New Balances that are peeking out from beneath my jeans and sigh. I’m sure this sounds like exasperation,
but it’s not.
“Si…” (It’s complicated.) After five more minutes of circular questioning in broken English and mangled Spanish they decide to
release us into Mexico. Finally, they’ve set us free.

It is dusk and our white, rented Daewoo reeks of stale cigarette smoke, so we roll down all the windows.
“You know, companies on the Korean stock market give these things away as incentives for shareholders,” says my dad. He is
talking about the car. The night’s hot, heavy, humid air has tangled itself up in us as if it’s making plans to stay. I imagine us
outrunning it, the air, in our tiny box of Korean aluminum. I pretend that I can see tiny wisps of it holding on, like fingers, to our
window frames. I watch, as our speed increases, each little finger slowly letting go until…Phsew! Gone. And the air left in the car is
cool and light, and it’s flying by.

It takes us twenty-five minutes to get to El Districto Historico. Once here, in the city-centre, the cursing begins. It is always muted and
under his breath. “Bloody-focking-‘ell.” But it’s the only time his accent comes back. “Bollocks.” His bald head turns the color of
beets. His lips purse and he only breathes through his nose as he manhandles the car around the Zocalo. “Fuck off, wanka.” I
cannot help but snicker to myself. (A) Because it is always funny to hear your parents curse when you are a child and (B) because I
can barely take British accents seriously. I’m always waiting for someone to ask for the Grey Poupon.

“You know, if we’d been two blue-eyed, blonde haired German tourists they wouldn’t have cared about our last names.” My dad is
convinced that finding the Hotel Mocambo would have been easier during daylight hours. It’s only just gotten dark and the
streetlights in the city are about as luminescent as oil lamps. It’s nearly impossible to read the street signs. “Calle de? What’d that
say? Via de, huh?” My dad gives up. We find a pay phone. I translate. We arrive at the Hotel Mocambo five minutes later.
The hotel is something straight out of a period piece. The Mocambo is high ceilings and sweeping mahogany staircases covered in
red carpets which are held in place by polished brass rods. It is one of those places where you sink into the carpet with each fresh
step. It’s all archways and breezeways, verandas and terraces, and it’s all frayed around the edges. I half expect to see Humphrey
Bogart sipping scotch and soda in the hotel bar, on location for some black and white with a working title like, The Savages of
Tenochtitlan. I peek around the corner of the lobby. The bar is empty.
We check into room 214—my mother’s birthday. We have gotten a suite and the room is spacious. Decorated Spanish tile touches
every surface. We throw open the doors to our balcony. The pool shivers in the darkness and just past it lays the ocean. I can’t see
the beach from here but I know it’s black. The volcanoes that lie only a few miles inland deposited their ash on the coast a million
years ago. My dad and I will discover tomorrow that the tradition hasn’t changed when we stumble across an old Volkswagen Bug
buried half way up to its windows. Its roof rusted away, I will want to climb inside. My dad will nix this idea. “Shoot,” I’ll say, kicking
volcanic sand in bare feet. But, for now, there is no car or beach to be seen. There is only the city and the sea to be heard, and my
dad’s snores.
We eat breakfast on the dining veranda. The sun is bright and my dad is craving a New York Times; he is forced to settle for El
Diario and the Veracruzeiro. He likes to read the words out loud even though he doesn’t know what they mean.
“Your accent sucks.”
“Oh, sorry Mr. Spanish Wunderkind.”
“Hey, it was you and Mom who put me in the immersion program.”
“HA! That was your mother’s doing. When it came to your education I stayed out. Her hands were far more capable than mine.”
There is a pause. “I mean, in terms of education I can’t exactly say that I know too much about it. I’ve learned a lot, but I wouldn’t
exactly want you to follow my lead. Isn’t that what parenting’s about? Wanting better for your kids than for yourself? I think that’s what
they told me at parenting school. I dunno, I skipped a lot of class.”
I laugh at this, “HAHA!” I think for a couple moments about my mother, the text-book writer and then my dad, the animal smuggler
turned biologist turned lawyer. He is playing the insurance game now.
“You know there’s a network of secret underground tunnels beneath this city?” asks my dad.
“No.”
“Well, there is. This viceroy built them as escape routes when Veracruz kept getting sacked by pirates like Captain Morgan and
Bluebeard. Subsequent viceroy’s and their wives used them to meet their secret lovers.”
After breakfast we sit on the veranda and talk about what we want to do today. The ocean’s breath is cool as it sways the palms
below the veranda. We do not have much time. We must go soon.

The city looks different during the day. Like the Mocambo it is all decadence and decay. I feel like some kind of Fool’s Gold King
Midas made his way through the city. Touching everything within his reach until Veracruz trembled and shook, glittering just off the
water until all this brilliance faded in the Pretender’s footsteps.